Backstage sound systems

[JasonH]

Who has got one? What speakers do you use? What amp and what pickup mic?

I'm going to be installing my system starting this friday. I'm using all 12" square baffle 6" 70v paging speakers. I've got two of them in the hallways SR and SL hallways, one of them in the changing room and another in the backstage room used to cross from SR to SL. I've got a 60 watt 6 channel TOA mixer/amp i'm using to drive the system. I've got an old sony unidirectional mic hanging over the stage to feed the system. I patched the microphone into a channel on my console and i'm feeding aux 6 into the TOA mixer amp. Its going to work pretty well I think :-)

[ccfan213]

i have this great backstage sound system, i call over the walkie talkies, we dont even have our own, we borrow the security ones after they leave, and crew members yell to the actors to get ready. :?

[JasonH]

lol, i've used this method before.

[JasonH]

i've also used the schools paging system for some helpful annoucements

"WHOVER HAS WIRELESS UNIT 10 PLEASE RETURN IT TO JASON ASAP"

and my personal favorite.....

"ANY BANDS WANTING A SOUNDCHECK COME TO THE AUDITORIUM RIGHT NOW"

[JahJahwarrior]

wel, our backstage is like a U. the stage is in the middle of it, hallways go to the back, and you have to run around the whole thing to switch sides. We just have the chuch fellowship stage (small Christian school, we rent fro a church) and we don't really have a backstage sound system. Our last play we set up a baby monitor....that actually worked pretty well.

[The_Guest]

Boy do I have a system, the entire "fine arts" wing is wired. That's the hallways, band room, choir room, rehersal space, dressing rooms, custom storage, scene shop, props storage, back stage, stage hallways, spotbooth, etc. They're all using 70v paging speakers, we have two permanent hanging mics right above the stage in the house to feed the system. The mics have their own preamp so they can be fed into the hearing impaired units as well and may be patched into the console (no preamp channels needed). An smaller replica of the system is powering the lobby areas but do not receive any of the paging feeds. I'm kinda thinking about putting in JBL control speakers in the lobby for more natural sound, the paging speakers don't exactly scream bass response.

[JasonH]

Nice,
I've seen some paging speakers with surprisingly good bass response. When the board audio tech installed the paging speaker in the booth he decided that 5 watts would be a good speaker tap setting. You can ___FEEL____ the secretary slamming her phone back on the hook. hehe

[ccfan213]

[quote="JasonH"
"ANY BANDS WANTING A SOUNDCHECK COME TO THE AUDITORIUM RIGHT NOW"[/quote] ahhh i dont even wanna get started on my soundchecks yesterday... the bands ignored my calls to come to the auditorium and we ended up doing soundchecks up till the minute the doors opened.

[dj_illusions]

we just use the standard pa system that is in the building, during the day it just runs the nromal pa program from foh but during performances we can swtich it over to backstage only and page with it, it also has aux inputs for music or a feed from the desk and has a standard input from a shotgun mic that is in our dress circle.

[SuperCow]

We have the entire theater area wired. The dance studio, the makeup rooms, the scenery shop and even the bathrooms! The soun'd actually pretty good, but a bit tinny. We have JBL's in the lobby for good sound output to the audience before they go in.